This panel will explore the connections between art and labour activism. Speakers from the Graphic History Collective (GHC) will discuss their work on a range of projects, including their new comic book Drawn to Change: Graphic Histories of Working-Class Struggle (2016) which is being published by a Toronto, union press, Between the Lines. Presenters will reflect on the importance and value of creating working-class comics, paying particular attention to the production process and how an accessible format opens up opportunities for building community, reaching broad audiences, and organizing in new and relevant ways.

GHC members Sean Carleton and Julia Smith will discuss the history and aims of the GHC as a unionized art collective as well as their comics on the Knights of Labor in the 1880s and the Socialist Feminist union SORWUC in the 1970s; Orion Keresztesi will talk about his comic about the Days of Action strikes in 1990s Ontario; and Jo SiMalaya Alcampo and Althea Balmes will talk about their comic about the contemporary struggles of Filipina migrant workers in Toronto.